A very petty local mayor couldn't help but carry through on whatever point he was trying to make by paying his $4,000 ethics fine in petty coins.

Last year, Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernandez was caught up in an ethics scandal over his business connections to Luis Felipe Pérez, a Hialeah jeweler who also dabbled in Ponzi scheming. Hernandez made loans totaling $180,000 to Pérez, and was paid back by the conman with an astounding 36 percent interest rate.

The Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust investigated. Hernandez wasn't actually punished for those business dealings. Instead, he got a relative slap on the wrist for lying to the public. He was ordered to pay a $4,000 fine. It didn't help that Hernandez also refused to comply with the investigation, and then intentionally skipped hearings.

Well, last November, the 54-year-old mayor had operatives show up at County Hall with 28 buckets filled with 400,000 pennies to pay the fine. Yep. The Ethics Commission reply: "Haha, yeah, no," basically.

Instead of just writing a check like a rational person, Hernandez wouldn't back down. According to The Miami Herald, Hernandez and the Ethics Commission eventually agreed that he could pay in coins, but only if he counted and properly boxed the currency himself.

So today, Hernandez had $3,500 worth of boxed pennies and $500 worth of boxed nickels delivered to City National Bank in Downtown Miami. The County keeps an account there.